Tedge’s murderous little eyes watched easterly.  They must find the other side of the tidal pass and go up it to strike off for the distant shrimp camps with their story of the end of the Marie Louise—­boat and cargo a total loss on Au Fer sands.

Upon the utter sea silence there came a sound—­a faint bawling of dying cattle, of trampled, choked cattle in the fume and flames.  It was very far off now; and to-morrow’s tide and wind would find nothing but a blackened timber, a swollen, floating carcass or two—­nothing more.

But the black man could see the funeral pyre; the distant glare of it was showing the whites of his eyes faintly to the master, when suddenly he stopped rowing.  A drag, the soft sibilance of a moving thing, was on his oar blade.  He jerked it free, staring.

“Lilies, boss—­makin’ out dis pass, too, lilies—­”

“I see ’em—­drop below ’em!” Tedge felt the glow of an unappeasable anger mount to his temples.  “Damn ’em—­I see ’em!”

There they were, upright, tranquil, immense hyacinths—­their spear-points three feet above the water, their feathery streamers drifting six feet below; the broad, waxy leaves floating above their bulbous surface mats—­they came on silently under the stars; they vanished under the stars seaward to their death.

“Yeh!” roared Tedge.  “Sun and sea to-morry—­they’ll be back on Au Fer like dried bones o’ dead men in the sand!  Bear east’ard off of ’em!”

The oarsman struggled in the deeper pass water.  The skiff bow suddenly plunged into a wall of green-and-purple bloom.  The points brushed Tedge’s cheek.  He cursed and smote them, tore them from the low bow and flung them.  But the engineman stood up and peered into the starlight.

“Yeh’ll not make it.  Better keep up the port shore.  I cain’t see nothin’ but lilies east’ard—­worlds o’flowers comin’ with the crevasse water behind ’em.”  He dipped a finger to the water, tasted of it, and grumbled on:  “It ain’t hardly salt, the big rivers are pourin’ such a flood out o’ the swamps.  Worlds o’ flowers comin’ out the passes—­”

“Damn the flowers!” Tedge arose, shaking his fist at them.  “Back out o’ ’em!  Pull up the Au Fer side, and we’ll break through ’em in the bay!”

Against the ebb tide close along Au Fer reef, the oarsman toiled until Crump, the lookout, grumbled again.

“The shoal’s blocked wi’ ’em!  They’re stranded on the ebb.  Tedge, yeh’ll have to wait for more water to pass this bar inside ’em.  Yeh try to cross the pass, and the lilies ’ll have us all to sea in this crazy skiff when the wind lifts wi’ the sun.”

“I’m clean wore out,” the black man muttered.  “Yeh can wait fer day and tide on the sand, boss.”

“Well, drive her in, then!” raged the skipper.  “The in-tide’ll set before daylight.  We’ll take it up the bay.”

He rolled over the bow, knee-deep in the warm inlet water, and dragged the skiff through the shoals.  Crump jammed an oar in the sand; and warping the headline to this, the three trudged on to the white dry ridge.  Tedge flung himself by the first stubby grass clump.